Psychiatrist for Susan Smith's Defense Tells of a Woman Desperate to Be Liked

By RICK BRAGG

Published: July 22, 1995

UNION, S.C., July 21—
Before Susan Smith had taken more than a few steps up a boat ramp after rolling her car into the lake with her two children strapped inside, she was already wondering what people would think of her, already forming her alibi, a forensic psychiatrist hired by the defense testified today.

What would seem to be a sign of selfishness, of cold-blooded behavior, was instead a sign of the 23-year-old Mrs. Smith's desperate need to be liked, a need that manifested itself in the months before the killings in a series of sexual encounters with some of the most unlikely people, her lawyers tried to show today.

Seymour Halleck, a psychiatrist and law professor at the University of North Carolina, testified that Mrs. Smith, suffering from depression and suicidal thoughts in the months leading up to the Oct. 25 killings, fell into a destructive cycle of sexual relationships to ease her loneliness.

In August alone, she had sexual relations with her stepfather, Beverly Russell; Tom Findlay, the son of the owner of the mill where Mrs. Smith worked; with Mr. Findlay's father, J. Carey Findlay, and with her husband, David Smith, from whom she was separated at the time.

By having sex with four men in the late summer and early fall of 1994, she temporarily eased her depression, but the guilt ultimately deepened her depression, Dr. Halleck said.

He went down the list of her sexual partners in an effort to poke holes in the prosecution's theory that Mrs. Smith killed her children, Michael, 3, and Alex, 14 months, so she could rekindle her love affair with Tom Findlay. Mr. Findlay had said he did not want a relationship that included children.

Dr. Halleck said David Smith went to Mrs. Smith's house and asked for sex at least twice in August 1994, which she agreed to even though she told Dr. Halleck she did not enjoy it.

Dr. Halleck said that she had sex with with Tom Findlay, the 28-year-old textile heir, but that he was not the main focus of her life.

"A passing love affair," Dr. Halleck called it. "I found she had strong feelings for a lot of different men, and it was very unlikely that Tom Findlay was No. 1 on her list."

The idea that she would kill her children, the most important things in her life, to reclaim Mr. Findlay is "an absurd idea," Dr. Halleck said.

Perhaps she had sex with Mr. Findlay's father because she had developed, when she was molested by her stepfather, a need for the love and approval of an older man, Dr. Halleck said.

The afternoon before she killed her children, Mrs. Smith told Tom Findlay that she had slept with his father, then, that evening, told him she had not slept with him, that it was "a joke."

Dr. Halleck said Mrs. Smith slept with Beverly Russell, the stepfather who had molested her when she was 15, even though she told Dr. Halleck that "it made her skin crawl." He said that perhaps she did it for the same reasons she slept with others -- to find love and win his approval.

Today's testimony was the most lurid so far in a trial that has at times seemed more soap opera than circuit court.

Dr. Halleck, who acknowledged to Tommy Pope, the chief prosecutor, that most of his information came from Mrs. Smith herself, said her constant need for affection was a symptom of "brief intermittent depressive disorder," in which Mrs. Smith was able, much of the time, to make co-workers and friends believe she was fine, even happy.

But he painted a dark, hopeless image of the months leading up to the killings. He said she began to drink heavily, was happy only when she was reinforced by the love of another and began to contemplate killing herself every day.

Dr. Halleck said she told him that on the night of the killings, she drove to a bridge over the Broad River and thought about taking her children in her arms and jumping. The sound of her sons crying made her get back in the car and drive away, she told him.

Then she drove to the boat ramp at John D. Long Lake. She told Dr. Halleck that she pulled near the end of the ramp and disengaged the gears, so the car would roll, and started it down the ramp. She jerked up the hand brake to stop it, let it roll a second time and jerked it up again.

Dr. Halleck said he believed that she intended to kill herself. But the next time she released the brake she ran from the car, "as some survival instinct" took over, he said.

He said she might have somehow blocked the presence of the two boys out of her memory, at the instant she released the brake.

As she ran through the forest, she began making up her story because she was so afraid of what others would think of her. Even after doing what she did, Mrs. Smith was still thinking about what others would think of her, he said.

The trial is expected to conclude in the next two days -- court will continue this weekend -- and then, after a 24-hour break, begin its penalty phase.

Mrs. Smith's lawyer, David Bruck, has rejected both technical defenses such as not guilty by reason of insanity and guilty but mentally ill. Mrs. Smith is not insane, Dr. Halleck said, but does suffer from mental disorders.

Mr. Bruck knows he cannot get an acquittal because Mrs. Smith has confessed, but he hopes the jury will see she did not maliciously kill her children and will decide not to give her the death penalty.

Mrs. Smith's lawyers are expected to save much of the more sympathetic testimony for the penalty phase of the trial. But several legal experts said they were surprised by how much information on her troubled life has already crept into the trial.

Through Dr. Halleck and other witnesses, Mr. Bruck has given the jurors a sad silhouette of Mrs. Smith without having to put her on the stand. That might not happen even in the penalty phase of the trial because, as even the state's own psychiatrist said, Mrs. Smith cannot be trusted to help herself on the stand.

She has said she wants to die and might sabotage her own case if allowed to testify.

Although Mr. Bruck has said that he will not try to make excuses for Mrs. Smith, and that she accepts responsibility for what she did, the past four days have featured one witness after another -- even some for the prosecution -- who made excuse after excuse for her, attributing the deaths to her her depression.

Mr. Pope, the prosecutor, tried to counter that by asking Dr. Halleck whether Mrs. Smith knew she was committing a crime. Dr. Halleck said Mrs. Smith knew that what she was doing was legally wrong, but he hedged on whether she knew it was morally wrong. Dr. Halleck kept referring to the killings as part of a suicide attempt.

Mr. Pope said the youngsters had no decision in Mrs. Smith's actions. "She did know right from wrong, and had the ability to make a choice?" Mr. Pope asked the witness.

"Yes," Dr. Halleck replied.

Photo: David Smith, Susan Smith's estranged husband, arriving at the county courthouse yesterday for the continuation of her trial. (Associated Press)